This blog is written by a journalist based in Mumbai who writes about cities, the environment, developmental issues, the media, women and many other subjects.The title 'ulti khopdi' is a Hindi phrase referring to someone who likes to look at things from the other side.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Crucial realities

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 15, 2015

This March 8 was not a very happy occasion. Despite the
celebrations, lurking at the back was not just the unseemly controversy
over the banning of the film India’s Daughter about the December
2012 Delhi gang rape and murder but also the public lynching of a man
accused of rape in Dimapur, Nagaland. There is no connection between the
two. Yet, the operative word was ‘rape’. It hung in the air even as we
told ourselves that the day was all about women’s empowerment.

Although
the film, watched extensively on the Internet despite the ban, produced
mixed responses, the chilling image that lingered was that of the
convict Mukesh Singh’s cold and unrepentant words as he spoke explicitly
of what happened on the bus that dreadful night of December 16. It
produced in all of us a mixture of revulsion and helplessness, the
former to hear a man responsible for the death of an innocent speak so
clinically and casually about it, and the latter because you knew that
this was not an aberrant, a monster, speaking but that he could be Mr.
Everyman or as someone pointed out, he was another of ‘India’s sons’.

And
while we discussed and debated, and for a brief while turned our
attention to that much neglected part of India, the Northeast, because
of the ghastly lynching of Syed Sarif Uddin Khan in Dimapur, more young
girls and women were molested, assaulted, raped. These statistics don't
take a break for any special day for women.

The
Dimapur killing was a reflection of the growing clamour for instant
justice echoed by people elected to uphold the law. On March 8,
Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Madhya Pradesh, Usha Thakur said in
response to the Dimapur lynching, “There is a need to make a stern law
against men who rape minor girls. Such criminals should be hanged in
full public view and their last rites should not be performed.” A recipe
to make India safer for women? Surely not.

At a time
when what happens today dominates and yesterday’s news is forgotten and
buried, we also forgot that thousands of women had occupied the streets
of Delhi just days before March 8. The march by farmers from 16 states
to Delhi on February 23, to register their protest against amendments to
the Land Acquisition Act, included hundreds of women. You can see them
in the photographs, women of all ages, wearing colourful saris,
determination writ clearly on their faces. They sat with the men and
made the same demands. They were there as farmers, and as women.

Who
were these women? Why had they travelled this long distance to Delhi?
Why was land so important to them? Did any of us speak to them and ask?
Apart from one TV channel that had two women farmers give their views on
the budget — a blink and miss intervention — the voices of such women
were never heard. And before we could find out what they were thinking,
they had packed up and gone back. We had missed the crucial reality that
farmers are not just men but also women, that agricultural losses and
the takeover of farming lands hits women as much as men and that this
gender dimension of the law needs to be heeded.

It
needs to be heard not just because women constitute 48.5 per cent of the
Indian population and therefore cannot be treated as invisible. But
also because recent studies suggest that there is a link between women’s
economic rights, their right to own land and business, and their
ability to face physical and other forms of violence.

Govind
Kelkar, Shantanu Gaikwad and Somdatta Mandal have recently published
one such study titled ‘Women’s Asset Ownership and Reduction in
Gender-based Violence’. The study is based on data from Karnataka and
Telangana, both states with patriarchal structures in land ownership and
Meghalaya, which has a matrilineal system.

Space
does not permit a detailed analysis of the facts in this study. It makes
the basic and important point that when women have control over land
and income, they have greater control of their lives. Ownership of
assets does not automatically add up to a reduction in violence as there
are many other factors making women vulnerable, particularly in the
home. Yet, this study and the women interviewed in the three states
suggest that ownership of land gives women greater self-respect in the
family and the courage to speak up.

Such studies are
important. We talk about violence against women (and not just rape).
There are no instant or easy solutions. Summary justice of the kind
being demanded will make no difference. We emphasise that male mindsets
must change if we want real and lasting change. Yet even as that
happens, we can take several specific and concrete steps to strengthen
women and equip them with the tools to counter violence. One of these
steps is making women owners of economic assets like land.

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My profile

Journalist, columnist, writer based in Mumbai. Author of "Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's largest slum" (Penguin, 2000). Worked with The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express and Himmat Weekly.
Other books include "Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues" edited with Ammu Joseph (published by Sage 1994/2006), "Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out" edited with Ammu Joesph (published by Kali for Women, 2003) and "Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters" (published by Zubaan, 2010).
Regular columns in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine and on The Hoot (www.thehoot.org).